Joe was GREAT!
But Ryan didn’t have an epic meltdown. He stuck to his script, and didn’t do himself or Romney any great harm.

I think both sides will think their candidate won.
Joe was fiesty and detailed. Paulie was dreamy, repetative, and vague.

But the real winner was Martha Raddatz. She was great!

You want to make the Sunday gabfests relevant again?
Give Martha ABC’s Sunday gabfest, and have Rachel Maddow get Meet the Press. And find someone to replace General Robert E. Lee’s military correspondent Bob Schieffer on CBS. Maybe they can get Chris Hayes to come over from MSNBC.

This way, Shieffer can go to the Old Reporters Home and interview the retirees, George Vowel-a-lot-alous can keep interviewing vacuous celebrities in the morning, and Disco Dancin’ Dave Gregory can get the job he was born for: announcing the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show – where his greatest weakness wouldn’t be so evident, since no one would expect him to ask follow-up questions of the canine winners and losers.

joan,
Cup O’ Schmoe and crew are doing their best.
It really is masterful. It is THE show to watch to see what the Villagers are babbling and gossiping about today.

And about a half hour ago, Joe brought in “my friend here,” Joe Klein, and, “bless his heart,” he went right for the ‘both sides won and both sides lost’ which is the default position of all DC Villagers as soon as they’ve had hit “Restart” by drinking their morning’s first cup of coffee.

My sister-in-law used to have a standup routine (for real; she used to do standup), about her aunt’s passive-aggressive saying: “God love him.” Yeah, God love ya, Paulie! And another one: You’re a piece of work, son.

CNN takes no stances – and all stances.
It is the “Cowardly News Network.”

I have more respect for FOX.
Sure, they look at politics through their own particular pair of beer goggles, but that’s better than the Cowardly News Network, CNN, which puts on blinders that don’t let them see the whole picture, it only lets them see things through the DC Villager lenses of “both sides… blah-dee-blah-blah-blah.”

Somewhere, Ted Turner is hoping someone kills him soon, just so he can spin in his grave 24 X 7 X 365, like the network he created spins horsesh*t out of horse race results.

Looks like he only wanted to get the upper-body DVD of that workout program, and cancelled out on the rest – but still got to keep the gifts that came with ordering it: a tube of ‘Man-tan” and a cheap baseball cap, with the sissy-band head-size adjustor, and not pre-sized, like the ones we manly-men wear.

Well, the morning coverage on Nice Polite Republican radio was arranged to make it seem like a draw, with a lot of emphasis on where Biden didn’t do so well, and carefully avoided mention of Ryan’s mistakes. My favorite circumlocution was when a correspondent couldn’t just come out and say that YES Ryan was wrong. “The answer is not no,” she said as she quickly moved on.

It was when he was trying to think of an empathetic story to tell about his fellow sociopath, Mitt.
And, there he is sitting across from Joe Biden, and what pops into his head? He tells some story about how kind Mitt was to some family in his church who lost family members IN A CAR ACCIDENT!
HE TELLS THAT STORY IN FRONT OF POOR JOE BIDEN!
Joe Biden?
Joe Biden, who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident when Paulie was still in shorts, and his father showing him how to shove firecrackers up frogs asses, to get a laugh out of his “serious little feller?”
Did he do that by accident?
Some weird cognitive connection?
Or, did he mention that story to throw Joe off his game?

Either way, it’s like sitting across from Jackie Kennedy and tellling her about how a friend of friend got shot in in the head in a case of road rage down in Texas.

What, no stories of compassionate Mitt with a person from church with cancer, so he has to fall back on some fatal car accident?
WTF?!?!?!

He tells some story about how kind Mitt was to some family in his church who lost family members IN A CAR ACCIDENT! HE TELLS THAT STORY IN FRONT OF POOR JOE BIDEN!

Yeah, and worse still, Ryan’s tragedy also happened at Christmastime, just like the Bidens’ car accident. My jaw dropped in that moment also (see 9:28 pm comment above). I thought, Is it possible Ryan has never heard about the Bidens’ tragedy? Or is he just stupid?

I guess there’s stupid as in not knowing that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and then there’s a kind of emotional stupidity where one doesn’t understand how one’s words or actions can inflict pain on others. I sensed a lot of the latter coming off Ryan last night. Unlike Sarah Palin or George W. Bush, he can feign verbal intelligence. But his emotional intelligence is nil. His “bean” story about abortion struck me as another glaring example. It was so pointless, considering it was meant to justify a governmental imposition of religion that will claim women’s lives. Apparently Ryan intended to strike a sentimental chord, but ended up just sounding self-centered and insensitive.

I’m certain Ryan knew about Biden’s particular tragedy. If he didn’t – he had pretty lousy coaching. What I don’t know is, whether this was an attempt to unhinge Joe, or whether it was just the kind of thing (like the Carly Simon/Jackie Kennedy) that pops out of one’s head under stress.

Now THAT is almost the funniest thing you’ve said here! What’s worse, it could well be true.

What with two Irish Catholics on stage, this reminds me of the time James Thurber heard a rendition of “Molly Malone” on the radio one Saint Patrick’s day — and it was cleaned up with a happy ending.

On reflection he decided that it was a misguided effort not to dampen the spirits of the Irish on St Patrick’s day. A colleague (a Mr Sullivan? I forget) set him straight: Nothing can dampen the spirits of the Irish on St Patrick’s Day.